2 | FROM DANCER TO DOCTOR June 19, 2017 | VOL. 53, No. 25
12 | BOWING OUT
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Danbury photographer rides her passion into a career
westfaironline.com
Charter Oak Brewery finds permanent home in Danbury BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
I Left, photo by Kathy Rusell. Right, Kathy Rusell. Photo by Phil Hall
BY PHIL HALL phall@westfairinc.com
C
an a horse be a diva? For Danbury-based equine photographer Kathy Russell, the answer is clearly yes. “When I am shooting, the horse is in charge,” she said. “For the most part, they cooperate, but sometimes they don’t, so I have to rethink or rework what
I am doing and cater to whatever the horse is willing to do. There definitely are horses that work the camera. I wouldn’t say that there are horses that are camera-shy, but I would say there are horses that are bored. They are like, oh, you’re not giving me a treat, so I don’t have to put my ears forward.” Although Kathy Russell Photography also places people, homes and dogs in the viewfinder, the central focus for this enter-
prise involves horses. Russell, a native of the Toronto area, was a self-described “barn rat” during her formative years and worked a variety of stable jobs, from the artistic braiding of horses’ manes to the decidedly less artistic shovel-and-bucket duty, to help pay for her photojournalism studies at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario. She recognized the potential in blending her twin interests into a career. “I grew up riding and being around horses and I always loved taking the camera out,” Russell said. “They say that if you can combine your passions and turn it into your work, you’ll never work a day in your life. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. When I decided that I wanted to be a photographer, the only kind of photography that I wanted to get into was equestrian.” » Passion, page 6
f everything goes according to plan, P. Scott Vallely will leave behind what he calls his “gypsy” life and start running Danbury’s first craft brewery later this year. “Unfortunately there’s no ‘easy button’ to push” when it comes to navigating a city’s bureaucracy, said Vallely, who to date has been crafting and packaging his Charter Oak Brewing Co. LLC wares at rented spaces at other breweries in locales such as as Branford and Holyoke, Massachusetts. Although he’s been selling Charter Oak’s brews only since 2012, he’s been homebrewing for some 38 years — “longer than most craft brewers today have been alive,” he said with a laugh. Getting clearance from Danbury for the enterprise has been an education, said Vallely. “Even though the mayor and the town hall are stoked about it, you still have to work through all the regulations,” including having to amend decades-old zoning rules to allow such an operation. That zoning process is something that nascent brewers in locales like Ridgefield, Berlin and Stonington have also had to navigate. A New Canaan resident, Vallely said he looked at a variety of possible locations » Brewery, page 6